Homi Bhabha Biography: Birth, Age, Family, Education, Career, Awards, Death and More

Homi J. Bhabha, the Father of the Indian Nuclear Programme, was a nuclear physicist, a dedicated architect, and a philanthropist. Through this article, know about his birth, age, family, education, career, death, and legacy. 

Feb 4, 2022, 13:29 IST
Homi Bhabha Biography: Birth, Age, Family, Education, Career, Awards, Death and More | Homi J Bhabha Biography
Homi Bhabha Biography: Birth, Age, Family, Education, Career, Awards, Death and More | Homi J Bhabha Biography

Homi Bhabha Biography: Homi Bhabha was a nuclear physicist, a dedicated architect, and a philanthropist. He was also the founding director and the professor of Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). He is also known as the Father of the Indian Nuclear Programme. 

Rocket Boys, a SonyLIV web series, portrays the lives of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. The former is known as the Father of the Indian Nuclear Programme while the latter is known as the Father of the Indian Space Programme. 

Homi Bhabha Biography

Birth 30 October 1909 
Age 56 years
Family

Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha (Father)

Meherbai Bhabha (Mother)

Education University of Cambridge (BS, PhD)
Occupation Scientist
Awards

Adams Prize (1942)

Padma Bhushan (1954)

Death  24 January 1966

Homi Bhabha Biography: Birth, Family, and Education

Homi Jehangir Bhabha was born on 30 October 1909 in an aristocratic family to Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meherbai Bhabha. His father was a known lawyer while his mother was a housemaker. 

Homi Bhabha passed the Senior Cambridge Examination at the age of sixteen. He went to Cambridge to attain a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Gonville and Caius College. 

He then began research at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge and his first paper was published in 1933. Two years later, he received his Ph.D. and stayed in Cambridge until 1939. 

Homi Bhabha Career

When the war broke in Europe, Bhabha was in India and decided to not return to England for the time being. 

He started his career with the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, as a Reader in Physics on the behest of  Nobel laureate CV Raman who at that time headed the Physics department in the institute. 

Two years later in 1942, Bhabha was elected as a member of the Royal Society and was later elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. In 1943, he was appointed as the President of the Physics section of the Indian Science Congress.  

He convinced many senior leaders of the Congress Party to start an ambitious nuclear programme. As part of his vision, he first established the Cosmic Ray Research Unit at the Institute and later the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bombay in 1945 with financial help from JRD Tata. 

In 1948, he set up the  Atomic Energy Commission and served as its first Chairperson. The same year, he was appointed by Jawaharlal Nehru as the director of the nuclear program and was tasked to develop nuclear weapons. 

In 1950, he represented India in IAEA conferences and served as President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland in 1955. 

From 1960 to 1963, he served as the President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. 

He contributed to Compton scattering, R-process, and the advancement of nuclear physics. He rose to international prominence after deriving a correct expression for the probability of scattering positrons by electrons, a process now known as Bhabha scattering.

Widely known as the Father of the Indian Nuclear Programme, Homi Bhabha formulated a strategy and focussed on extracting power from India's vast thorium reserves rather than its uranium reserves. The theory proposed by him became India's three-stage nuclear power programme.

Homi Bhabha Awards

Homi Bhabha received the Adams Prize from the University of Cambridge in 1942, Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 1954, and was also nominated for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951 and 1953–1956. 

Homi Bhabha Death

Homi Bhabha died on 24 January 1966 in an aeroplane crash. He was aboard Air India Flight 101 which crashed near Mont Blanc. Post his death, many assassination theories surfaced. 

Homi Bhabha Legacy

After his death in 1966, the Atomic Energy Establishment in Mumbai was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in his honour.

A radio telescope in India's Ooty was his initiative which became a reality in 1970. 

Homi Bhabha National Institute, an Indian deemed university, and the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai are the noted institutions in his name. 

Also Read | Ramesh Deo Biography: Birth, Age, Death, Family, Film Career and Awards

Arfa Javaid
Arfa Javaid

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FAQs

  • Why is Homi Bhabha famous?
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    Homi J Bhabha is famously known as the father of the Indian nuclear programme.
  • What did Homi Bhabha discover?
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    Homi Bhabha was known for shaping the Indian nuclear programme, the Cascade process of Cosmic radiations, Bhabha Scattering, and the Theoretical prediction of Muon.

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